Sea Ice Concentration Retrievals by Using Composite ScanSAR Features in a SAR Data Assimilation Process

Ambiguities in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images affect the performance of data assimilation systems for sea ice analysis. Incidence angle dependency of radar backscatter along the range direction is one of them. This important aspect can be taken into account both in a forward model and in a proper feature selection process. In this study, an incident angle dependent forward model is employed to reduce this ambiguity. Moreover, instead of assimilation of ScanSAR features for the entire swath, individual features for specific incident angle intervals are selected, combined and assimilated in order to decrease analysis bias and to achieve more consistent results.